1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an automatic clinical sample dispensing method and system for dispensing a sample including a body fluid, such as blood, blood plasma, blood serum or urine, from its original container into a dispensing container to examine the sample, and a clinical sample indicating method.
2. Description of the Related Art
FIG. 7 is a flowchart for explaining a conventional clinical sample dispensing method. A label 2 showing a sample number, which is acquired by encoding information, such as patient name, test specifying information and the requester's name, into a numeral or the like, is stuck on an original container 1 (like a test tube typically 12 mm or 16 mm in diameter) containing a sample, in a hospital or the like. Then, the original container 1 is sent to a clinical laboratory, i.e., a sample test laboratory. The necessary items described on a sample test request sheet 3 are input into a host computer 4 in the sample test laboratory, by use of, for example, punched cards or keyboards. The host computer 4 prepares a list 5 of sample numbers of dispensing containers 6 which are set on dispensing container racks 12 and 14. Based on the list 5, a laboratory technologist, i.e., a worker or tester 8 stores the correlation between the coordinates of the original containers 1 in an original container rack 9 and those of the dispensing containers 6 in the dispensing container rack 12 into a memory of an automatic dispensing machine (not shown), and dispenses samples from the original containers 1 set in the original container rack 9 into the associated dispensing containers 6. The worker 8 then sets the dispensing container rack which is holding the dispensing containers 6 containing the samples, in an automatic analyzer 13. When there are samples which require manual testing denoted by number 11, these are dispensed into dispensing containers 6 in another dispensing container rack 14 for such testing. Further, precision dispensing may be conducted using an automatic precision dispensing machine 15. The results of the test are output from the host computer 4 on a report 16 which is sent to the physician, i.e., test requester.
In the prior art as described above, the dispensing destinations are specified by the worker 8, i.e., manually. Using this method, there is a possibility that the tester's hands, for example, will become contaminated by samples or some other sanitary problem will occur, samples will be spilled accidentally, or the wrong dispensing destination selected. Further, since sample dispensing is carried out according to the list 5 showing the correlation between samples and the dispensing containers 6 and prepared in advance by the computer 4, when there is any sample that cannot be dispensed for some reasons, the associated dispensing container 6 in the dispensing container rack 12 becomes empty. If there is an empty container in the dispensing container rack 12, however, an ordinary automatic analyzer 13 thereafter considers the empty container as a vacant spot, i.e., not containing a sample container. When an empty container is found in the dispensing container rack 12, the original container 1 which contains the associated sample is searched for and dispensing work is performed manually. Such dispensing failures by the automatic dispensing machine affect typically 3 to 5% of all the samples per day amounting to tens of thousands of cases, for example. Every time an empty container is found, the worker 8 must look for the associated original container, thus lowering working efficiency. In addition, as the sample number is a large number including, for example, six digits, it is not easy, and takes time, to find the original container having the sample number in question in a sample storage.